Russ wished him good night and inserted his key in the lock, entering quietly so as not to disturb anyone. The kitchen was empty; Rachel had gone to bed. No, she wouldn’t have left the light on – oh, there was a note. He leaned on the table. I’m in the bath.
He took off his coat and hung it up, then went to warm his hands by the fire, rubbing them against each other. The clock ticked. He looked about for something to occupy him until she came out. Tonight’s newspaper lay on the sofa. He sat down and read the passages that he had overlooked earlier. The sound of splashing drew his eyes to the door of the scullery. He stared at the varnished wood. I’m in the bath. Was it an order to stay out… or an invitation? He touched his tongue to the corner of his mouth, wondering. His nostrils began to twitch and his breathing became deeper. Rattling the paper into reading position, he commanded his eyes to take in the words… but soon they were straying to that door again.
Folding the paper, he stood. His hands smoothed his hair back several times as if trying to drive the thought away. A palm ran itself around the back of his neck, kneading. A movement in the mirror caused him to look at himself – a nervous, shifty-looking wretch. Altering his expression, he leaned closer to the glass. You look quite presentable, chin cleanly shaven, moustache trimmed, clean shirt, clean all over. He heard the splash of water again. His chest rose and fell. Wheeling from the mirror, he clutched his arms around himself and hugged tightly. I’m in the bath. His body felt like a bag of water. He ran his hands up and down it, into his groin. With a silent curse, he strode to the passage to retrieve his pack of cigarettes from his coat. Sticking one between his lips, he struck a match… but before he lit the cigarette his eyes, once again, became glued to that door.
* * *
The water was growing cool. Rachel lifted the top half of her body and reached for a towel, wrapping it round her as she lifted one dripping foot out of the bath, then the other. Russell should be home soon. She paused to cock her head, listening for the sound of him. All was quiet. She continued to dry herself, humming softly.
The door to the kitchen opened. With a small gasp, she clutched the towel to her breast. ‘I left you a note – didn’t you see it?’ Her eyes were round.
Russ stood there gazing at her. Her honey-brown hair was tied up, but frizzy little wisps of it clung round her face. The latter glowed pink and radiant… like the rest of her body. The towel hid most of it, but even the sight of her shoulders and upper chest excited him. He wanted to press his mouth to them.
With the lack of an answer she became frightened, her brown eyes dilated. ‘Russell…’
Suddenly, he became alive to the effect he was having on her and he took a step forward. ‘I thought… well, we’ve been getting on better lately, I hoped we might…’
She stepped back. ‘Get away!’
He kept coming. ‘Rachel, love.’
She stumbled backwards, hauled on a drawer, scrabbled inside it. Her hand emerged clutching a vegetable knife, which she held in front of her. ‘Stay away from me or I’ll kill you!’
This stopped him. The longing died – horror spread across his face. Then even this faded. Not a word did he speak as he turned away and limped from the scullery, closing the door after him.
She kept her defensive position for some seconds, the knife trembling, her whole body trembling… but with what? Fear or longing?
After a time, she felt composed enough to remove the towel, and slipped into her nightclothes. Tying the sash of her dressing gown, she emptied the bath, cleaned it and replaced the board. When all was straight she set her feet at the door. A nervous peep round it told her that Russell was no longer here. She released the breath she had been holding and stepped into the room. Loosing her hair, she ran a brush through it, smoothing back all the damp wisps from her temples. The face that looked back at her was strange, made her stop and examine it. If this was the woman he had seen then no wonder he had got the wrong idea – she looked positively wanton, her eyes not brown, but almost black with the dilated pupils, cheeks flushed, lips pumped up with blood. Rebuking herself, she finished brushing her hair, turned off the light and crept up the stairs.
Russ sat on his bed, staring at the photograph. With the creak of the stairs he lifted his face… but at the soft click of her door his eyes dropped back to the picture.
* * *
Rachel was woken by a shout. It had happened quite regularly over the past year. Groaning, she turned over, waiting for the muffled sobs that always pursued it. They came on cue. Rachel knew from past experience that she would not sleep until they were over. But tonight for some reason they went on and on. He’s going to wake the children if he goes on much longer. This thought finally persuaded her to get up and check to see if her daughters had been disturbed.
Remembering that Rosalyn was now in Robert’s room, she went here first. There was no sound, but something urged her to go right up to the bed. It was empty! Panic swamped her. Hand over mouth, she spun and ran to the girls’ room. There, in bed with two of her sisters, she found Lyn. Relief buckled her legs. Fighting back the urge to exclaim, she left them asleep and crept back to the landing. Here, she leaned against the wall to recover. He was still crying. It took many more minutes before she summoned the will to go in.
He did not check at her entry, but kept on sobbing. She approached the bed with caution. ‘Russell…’ Even now he did not look up. She adopted a tentative perch on the bed and put a hand to his racked shoulder. At once, one of his hands flew up to clutch it, like that of a drowning man. She fought the terrified reflex and left it there. She sat thus for a long spell; indeed, until he had finished crying. With the silence, she slipped her hand from under his, rose and made as if to leave.
His head came off the pillow. ‘Don’t go!’
She turned back to look at him, lips parting.
‘Please.’ He reached out to her. ‘I promise I won’t touch you. Just stay with me.’
She took hold of his hand and, when he pulled aside the covers, slipped into bed beside him. He made no move to put his arms round her, just kept gripping her hand. But in the small bed it was hard not to make contact with his body. She felt its heat burning into her side. Nothing was said. She stayed until he fell asleep.
* * *
In the morning he woke to find himself alone and assumed it had all been a dream. The fact that his wife made no mention of it when he came down reinforced this belief. She had plenty of opportunity to comment; they were alone for fifteen minutes before the girls came down, but all she spoke about as she prepared breakfast was the weather.
‘And what happened to you last night?’ she finally said as the children came down, all giggling and excited over their Christmas gifts. He looked at her, but she was addressing one of the girls. ‘All that fuss you made about wanting a room to yourself! You gave me the shock of my life when I looked in during the night and found the bed empty.’
Lyn stopped chattering and bowed her head. ‘I was lonely.’
Her mother gave a soft chuckle and proceeded with breakfast. But her statement had made Russ think: she had been there last night, he hadn’t dreamt it.
When the girls had gone to play on a slide down the street, he said, ‘You must think I’m not much of a man, crying and carrying on like that.’
She froze for a second, then carried on with her mixing. ‘Of course I don’t… half the trouble is that blessed photograph you keep looking at. The war’s finished, you should tear it up, it’s no good dwelling on the dead, it isn’t going to bring them back.’
‘You think tearing up a bit o’ paper is going to make it all disappear?’ he asked cynically.
‘I’m not saying you’ll forget, but sitting looking at it all the time… it’s only tormenting yourself. Goodness knows I’ve done enough of that myself.’ She whipped furiously at the mixture in the bowl.
‘I saw him.’
She stopped mixing again. ‘What?’
‘Bertie… I saw him in
France. I was the one who had him sent home… got him killed.’
She abandoned the bowl to flop down at the table. ‘Tell me.’
‘I shouldn’t have brought it up.’
‘Tell me!’
After a sigh he began, leaving out the bit about finding Bertie on field punishment, knowing how it would hurt her. ‘I met up with him on the Somme. He’d enlisted under a false name. I tried to make it up with him, but he was still as hostile as ever… hated me.’
‘How… how was he?’ Rachel plucked at the chenille tablecloth.
He lied. ‘Quite well… I can’t help thinking, Rachel, what if I hadn’t met him? Would he still be alive?’
She jumped from the chair, tucked the bowl under her arm and began to lash at the batter. ‘He’d probably still be dead. Been shot or…’ Her face crumpled in grief.
He moved over to her, ‘Oh, Rache,’ prised the bowl from her hands and put it on the table, then took her in his arms, squeezing her. ‘Please don’t.’ She cried noisily into his shoulder, while he hugged her so tightly he almost cracked her ribs, begging her to stop. Finally it ended. She pulled away, searched her apron for a handkerchief and mopped her face.
‘I shall have to get on with dinner.’
‘Don’t leave it like this,’ he entreated softly.
She whirled on him. ‘Well, what do you want me to say? Don’t think I don’t know why you’ve told me this. You want me to forgive you. That’s why you’ve always clammed up at the mention of his name, that’s what half of these nightmares have been about, haven’t they? Guilt, guilt about killing our son!’ On the heels of accusal came regret. ‘I didn’t mean that…’
‘Yes, you’re right.’ Russ sat down with a bump, eyes glassy.
‘No!’ She came up to stand in front of him. ‘We have to stop blaming each other, ourselves. It’s been said a hundred times – it isn’t going to bring him back!’
All of a sudden his arms shot out and imprisoned her, pulling her almost off balance. He pressed his cheek into her belly, whispering, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’
At first she tried to worm away, pressing her hands against his head as a lever. But slowly she gave in and instead used her hands to cradle his face, holding it to her abdomen and kissing the top of it… and then she felt his hands cup her buttocks, moving round and round. His face was now turned right into her belly, kissing her, rubbing. At once she recoiled. But the look in his eyes drew her back. She stood there and let him run his hands over her, their pace growing frantic.
‘The children might come in!’ But her eyes said she wanted him.
He checked, breath coming rapidly, waiting for her permission. When she made no further objection he stood, without releasing her, kissing her neck, her face, murmuring her name over and over again. And then she was kissing him back, letting him do things to her, feeling the heat of his palms, pressing her hands to his temples and dragging his lips down.
‘Come on,’ he said, voice urgent, and led her to the stairs. All the while he looked back at her, terrified she would change her mind. When they reached the landing he swept her into what had once been their room and closed the door. Here, she moved away from him, and stood by the bed, fingers playing with the brooch at her throat, waiting…
His eyes swept her, the longing burgeoned… yet something held him back. Like a starved man faced with a banquet, wanting to gorge but knowing he would be sick. Come on, come on, he urged himself. He swallowed and closed the gap between them. His rough fingers fumbled over the brooch. Tender of face, she stopped him and unpinned it herself. She had unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blouse when he asked gruffly, ‘Can I do it?’
Dropping her hands to her sides, she allowed him to disrobe the top half of her body. Stepping back, he trailed the backs of gentle fingers over her breast… it was agony. Feeling himself about to burst, he ripped off his own clothes whilst she stepped out of her skirts. When both were naked, they came together. At the slightest contact Russ let out an ecstatic moan and gathered her into bed.
And then came panic, blind, irrational panic. In his haste he treated her more roughly than he had intended, pushing himself right up into her, ignoring her little gasp of discomfort, clawing her buttocks to wrap her flesh all around him. Inside, she felt him spurt. ‘Oh hell…’ He slumped on top of her, face buried in her hair. After a period of silence, but for their breathing, came a muffled, ‘I’m out of practice.’
Her body rippled with soft laughter. He revealed his face and let out a chuckle of his own. ‘I’ve said the right thing for once. Oh…!’ He scooped his hands between her and the mattress and squeezed her tightly. ‘Rachel, Rachel… I do love you so! Can I stay like this?’
She moved her head in agreement, allowing him to lay there in the fork of her legs, bearing the full weight of his body, each nuzzling the other’s face, murmuring tenderly. In time, he started to move. Less violently than before. It lasted longer too, building up to a climax so intense and overwhelming that it robbed them of speech for a long time. Eventually, he rolled off her with a huge sigh of something that sounded like triumph… yet the mattress began to tremor as his body convulsed. Alarmed, she turned her face on the pillow. His own head was turned away. When she extended concerned fingertips to his shoulder, he faced her and she saw tears… but tears of laughter. It brought a chuckle to her own lips. ‘What’s so funny?’
His face was puckish as he gestured at the picture on the wall. ‘I don’t know if you noticed… but your mother’s been watching us all the time.’
The hand that had touched his shoulder covered her mouth, but she laughed behind it. Still grinning, Russ shuffled round to press the front of his body into her side, hooking a leg over hers. Thus they lay until Rachel spoke again. ‘I want to get married.’
This had the effect of making him laugh again. But, ‘I’m serious,’ she murmured, cradling his face. ‘I meant it, what I said to you when Charlie came, about not feeling as if I was ever married to you.’ At his groan of concern she added, ‘No, no, don’t think I’m stirring it all up again. It’s just that… if we’re to share a bed again, I want to feel that I’m properly married.’
A little of his fear was eroded. ‘So… you’ll have me back?’
She showed surprise. ‘That’s rather a funny question considering the compromising position we’re in.’ Both laughed and stroked each other. ‘But I mean it, Russell, I want us to retake our marriage vows.’
He teased a piece of hair from her neck and said quietly, ‘I’ll keep them this time.’
She gave a thoughtful nod, then both embraced passionately until Rachel caught sight of the clock over his shoulder and exclaimed, ‘Oh, my goodness, that chicken will be burnt – and the injuries I suffered in getting it!’ Christmas fowl were in short supply. She leapt out of bed and began to dress, urging him to do the same. When she had got as far as pulling on her skirt she saw that he had not moved but was laying with his hands raised to grip the head board, a wide grin on his face. ‘Russell, I said get dressed! And what’s so amusing?’
He rolled leisurely from the bed to pull on his pants. ‘I’m just wondering – what do we say when the vicar gives us a talk about begetting children? Say, “oh, it’s all right, Reverend, we’ve got six already”?’
‘Oh, Russell!’ She aimed a swipe at his head, which he evaded to grab her again.
‘Well, there’s one thing, lass… we’ll have plenty of bridesmaids.’
Still smiling, she put her hands round her back to unhook his embrace. ‘I think that would be taking things a bit too far – and we haven’t got six, we’ve got seven.’ She finished dressing, saying at his look of dismay, ‘It’s no good trying to forget him.’
The beautiful morning was dulled. Russ hauled his braces over his shoulders. ‘I don’t look upon him as mine.’
‘Well, he is yours!’ She pushed him off the bed in order to make it. Then her face softened and she tapped his arm in passing. ‘Oh, don’t let’s
start that again… but look, I’ve come to terms with him being yours, why can’t you?’
Russ lowered his head and shook it. ‘I just can’t… I keep seeing Bertie.’
‘And so do I… but you might at least try to be a bit less sullen when he comes home this time. Let’s keep it a happy Christmas.’
He smiled at her. ‘I’ll be happy if I’m back in here with you.’
She took her hand away. ‘No… not yet – at least, not until Charlie goes back.’ An awkward laugh. ‘I seem to have my mental block too. I don’t think I could be in here with you, knowing Charlie was above us. It wouldn’t seem right.’ At Russ’ collapse she touched him again. ‘It won’t be for long… come on, we’d better go down. I can hear the girls.’ And before he could respond she had flown down the stairs.
‘Don’t you dare say anything to spoil it!’ Rowena was whispering to Beany as they came through the back door, faces rosy – not merely with cold, but with excitement; Lyn, having run home to go to the lavatory, had seen her parents kissing and had run back quickly to tell her sisters. Now, all were eager to see the results.
‘Why are you only telling me?’ demanded Beany. ‘Why not Squawk?’
‘Because you’re the one who always asks questions, wanting to know everything!’ said Rowena. ‘This is private between Mother and Father. If you start getting nosy it might make Mother…’ she clammed up as a bright-eyed Rachel suddenly bounced into the room, looking somewhat abashed.
‘Hello! Had a good slide?’ She went straight to the oven to check on the bird.
The girls said they had. Then their father entered. Rowena looked at him – and knew that Lyn had not invented that kiss. Mother had forgiven him. She shared a conspiratorial look with her sisters.
Becky bit her lip and grinned into her coat front.
My Father, My Son Page 61